The way science is communicated in the media varies, more so than any other discipline, with the intended audience. Outside of scientific journals and technical literature, which cater directly to scientists, the gritty details of scientific papers are often left out. The wider the audience, generally speaking, the more diffuse the technical information.
However, that is not to say that scientific media outside of journals is somehow a lesser form of more technical literature. Many print and online publications feature a worthwhile ideological and conceptual insight into scientific principles and their significance. RadioLab is a prime example of such a publication. Each week, the hosts of RadioLab, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, attempt to make sense of complicated scientific phenomena from an ethical, emotional and somewhat technical perspective. Some notable examples of past shows include Double Blasted: a story about cancer and the only man in history to be hit by both atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as Unraveling Bolero: a story about creativity, composer Maurice Ravel and his degenerative fronto-temporal dementia. In addition to weekly podcasts, the Radiolab blog features similarly themed articles like Mapping What You Cannot See, Cannot Know, Cannot Visit which discusses R. Brent Tully’s creation of a map of a 500 million light year across super cluster (which holds millions of millions of galaxies) in the context of Eratosthenes, the first man to calculate the circumference of the Earth in the ancient world. The article doesn’t simply recount a scientific achievement, instead it offers perspective on why it is so extraordinary to have a map so large—to truly understand our place in the universe. After all, in terms of geological time scale, it wasn’t long ago that our ancestors had no conception of place beyond the villages they could see in their lifetimes. Sedentary hunter gatherers had no notion of a continent, much less a planet or a galaxy, let alone millions of galaxies. This show casts a wide net, to be sure. Still, the way it blends equal parts of science, philosophy and human experience leaves one with enough technical knowledge to understand the science involved along with enough perspective to see its importance.
Possibly the complete antithesis of RadioLab is Mettler Toledo’s Chemical engineering blog, Chemical Research, Development and Scale-Up. This is a highly technical, career oriented blog. The people who frequent this site are Chemists and Engineers who wish to read about strategies to hone their craft. The article Best Practice For Inline Particle Size Characterization discusses how engineers can better optimize chemical suspensions, emulsions and crystallizations among other things. This blog entry in particular, actually links to a full fledged pdf profile of industry best practice with cited references. Clearly, this is an exploitable information resource for those who need it and not an entertaining exploratory analysis of science.
What is so interesting about science media is the diversity of the people who consume it. Unlike entirely technical, career-based pursuits like international law or finance, in science, central ideas of some study are often presented in mainstream media in such a way that they provoke interest and can be understood by the general public. Personally, I ascribe this difference science has with other technical pursuits to the efforts of publications like RadioLab. By retaining core concepts and shedding unnecessary technical information, RadioLab and publications of the like contribute greatly in bringing science to a much larger audience.
Relevant Links:
http://blog.autochem.mt.com/2013/04/best-practice-for-inline-particle-size-characterization/
http://www.mt.com/dam/non-indexed/po/autochem/Particle-US.pdf
http://www.radiolab.org/story/mapping-what-you-cannot-see-cannot-know-cannot-visit-kw/
